Congressional Intelligence Oversight in Jeopardy
In a “shocking and inexcusable” action that may threaten the institution of congressional intelligence oversight, an anonymous Senator yesterday blocked Senate consideration of the pending Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2007. No intelligence authorization bill has been passed by Congress for the past two years.
If Congress remains unable to legislate an intelligence authorization act, which is the principal product of the intelligence oversight committees each year, then the committees themselves could be rendered irrelevant, officials say.
“The Senate’s failure to pass this critical national security legislation for the past 2 years is remarkably shocking and inexcusable,” said an angry Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“The result of this continued obstruction will be diminished authority for intelligence agencies to do their job in protecting America. I hope the [anonymous] Senator involved takes satisfaction in that,” Senator Rockefeller said March 6.
The Senator who is holding up the bill is Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), according to Tim Starks of Congressional Quarterly.
Sen. DeMint “is said to be concerned about provisions of the bill that require the Bush administration to report to Congress on its detention policies, such as those pertaining to its secret CIA prisons, as well as a provision to declassify the total intelligence budget,” CQ reported on March 6.
In anticipation of future known and unknown health security threats, including new pandemics, biothreats, and climate-related health emergencies, our answers need to be much faster, cheaper, and less disruptive to other operations.
To unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence within the Department of Health and Human Services, an AI Corps should be established, embedding specialized AI experts within each of the department’s 10 agencies.
Investing in interventions behind the walls is not just a matter of improving conditions for incarcerated individuals—it is a public safety and economic imperative. By reducing recidivism through education and family contact, we can improve reentry outcomes and save billions in taxpayer dollars.
The U.S. government should establish a public-private National Exposome Project (NEP) to generate benchmark human exposure levels for the ~80,000 chemicals to which Americans are regularly exposed.